This summer has been a pivotal period in my college years thus far. I live and travel in waves of obsessions. I often find an interest grow into a consuming obsession to learn. This interest represents array of subjects such as African socialism, Fixed Income finance, Russian cinema, DIY music, 1969.
Yes 1969. The Woodstock festival. Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Baez, Richie Havens, Led Zeppelin, Bitches Brew. And across the atlantic, The Beatles. Haight street. Harvard uprising. My Lai. Apollo 11. Joan Didion's slouching towards Bethlehem. My view is limited, for it is shaped by literature or music or at best archival footage of that period. Richie Havens was performing at battery park last thursday as a tribute to Woodstock and it rained to my dismay. The few people that could talk about those interesting days are of the likes of JP, the awesome vietnam veteran that works in the mailroom at my workplace. Yes, my daily half hour banter with JP covers everything from brooklyn in his heydays, New York accents to Katz's, all while categorically dismissing my flippant thought of moving to bed stuy ("it's not safe you see, for a girl"). Then there is old Larry the guard in Palladium who frowns as he recounts his experiences in crack ravaged hell's hole that was New York in the 70's. Thus my cultural enlightening is restricted to what best media and a few baby boomers can offer regarding the bygone times - my keen interest, I admit, is a second handed appreciation. I get carried away into thoughts around mushroom land..I encounter a feeling that resembles nostalgia. But it cannot be nostalgia, for the plain truth that I haven't seen or experienced these events as they happened, obviously. It must be different altogether to actually live it - If I had, would I still entertain romantic idealism to flourish in my sentiments of 1969?
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